The EU election thread

[Louis VI the Fat]

- Greens did unsurprinsingly well. Daniel Cohn-Bendit is kind of a hero in France. His charisma partly explains the Greens' success.

Meh, 'red' Daniel Cohn-Bendit is a paedophile.

- The Centre failed, badly. Quite a shame, given that Europe was created by centrism in the first place. Quite a hit for Bayrou, who appeared as a serious contender during the presidential elections.

Bayrou es trop minable.

Shame that Bayrou lost it. He should really become the centrist alternative to the right. There is no other. The PS is history, they've got only 246 members left, who spend their time fighting one another for the leadership of the party. To the left of the PS, the abyss.

- The majority won, by a huge margin. More seats than both the greens and the socialists together. Almost unbelievable, given how much of a twit Sarkozy is.

I rather like Sarkozy. For all his faults and insufferable character, I can't help agreeing with him often. And he was an excellent EU chairman last year.

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Feudalism, theocracy, anti-Semitism, monarchism, inequality - one man's far-right reactionarism is another one's moderate, traditional, mainstream conservative.

I too consider the far-right to consist of more than just fascism. The far-left isn't limited to communists either. There are far-left fruitcakes of other ideological origin. Both flanks have their share of extreme parties.

Not all concepts translate well from country to country. For example, the concept of hereditary leadership has strangely managed to sell itself to some electorates elsewhere in Europe as centrist democratic. That is, not being able to elect one's leader is considered the summit of democracy.
The result of historical compromise, lack of revolution, or of foreign restauration. Resulting in such wonders as, for example, socialist monarchists in Denmark. Whereas monarchism in France has remained reactionary, far-right.